Something I’ve been asked several times since sharing the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist is, “How are the PCs supposed to pull off the heist at Kolat Towers?”
The perception is that the opposition at Kolat Towers is so deadly that, if the PCs choose to engage it, they’ll get wiped out.
The first thing to understand is that, to a large extent, that’s what makes this such a great heist. The fact that the PCs can’t just bull rush their way through the opposition is both why they need to perform a heist (in order to avoid direct confrontation) and why the heist will be so utterly satisfying when they do pull it off.
With that being said, let’s talk a little bit about how this heist works in actual practice.
BROAD TOPOGRAPHY
If you’re not familiar with Dragon Heist or the Alexandrian Remix, here are a few key facts that should help you understand what follows.
(1) Kolat Towers is the headquarters for a sect of the Zhentarim ruled by Manshoon.
(2) There is a force field around Kolat Towers. Those wearing a pass-amulet can pass through the force field.
(3) You can also access Kolat Towers by means of teleportation circles that are located in various Zhentarim outposts around Waterdeep/Faerun. The Kolat Towers side of these teleportation circles are all located in a single hub at the top of one of the towers.
(4) This hub also contains a secured teleportation circle that leads to an interdimensional fortress that serves as Manshoon’s Sanctum. Using this teleportation circle requires the use of a teleportation signet ring.
(5) The primary target of the heist is a magical Eye, which Manshoon keeps in an astral vault in his library. The library is located at the top of one of the three spires in the Sanctum.
(6) Manshoon spends most of his time in his quarters or laboratory, which are more or less located at the top of the other two spires.
So, broadly speaking, you need to get access to Kolat Towers, use a teleportation signet ring to get access to the Sanctum, and then steal the Eye out of the library.
KEY FACTORS
There are a couple major factors to keep in mind when running the Kolat Towers heist.
First, as noted in the remix:
…most of the Towers’ inhabitants will simply assume that anyone who has bypassed the force field must have a pass-amulet and, therefore, must have legitimate business there. Their incredible security system has, ultimately, made them somewhat lax when it comes to actual security, and PCs who are smart enough to lean into that assumption can effectively seize a surveillance opportunity for themselves mid-heist.
This is really important. If you screw this up — by, for example, having the first NPC to see the PCs immediately scream bloody murder and call for help — then it’s going to be much, much more difficult to pull off a successful heist.
(It’s okay if the PCs screw it up, of course. That’s their unique prerogative.)
Second, the remix also has a section on “Questioning the Zhentarim” which describes what the typical Zhentarim thugs, apprentice wizards, and lieutenants all know about the layout of Kolat Towers, the location of Manshoon, the Stone of Golorr, and the location of Manshoon’s Eye.
The important thing to remember here is that all of these NPCs can (and likely will) be encountered before they enter Kolat Towers. That’s by design: If the PCs stumble blindly into a direct confrontation with Manshoon, then they’re probably screwed. To avoid that, they need to know where to go and, equally importantly, where NOT to go in the Sanctum.
Third, if things do go haywire and the heist fails, the original description of Manshoon from Dragon Heist (p. 160) should be kept in mind:
This version of Manshoon isn’t spoiling for a fight. He commends the characters for making it this far and shows no concerns for the Zhents they defeated to each him, since he considers all his followers expendable. The characters’ best chance of survival is to convince Manshoon that they can be cowed or bribed into working for him. Weary of his conflict with the Xanathar Guild, Manshoon suggests that the players prove their usefulness to him by hunting down and killing Xanathar in its lair…
I’d tweak this slightly, for the purposes of the Remix, to suggest that Manshoon’s top demand will be for the PCs to steal back the Eye that Xanathar stole from him. (Hopefully the PCs will do a better job of this new heist they’ve been pointed at.)
Regardless, at this point in the campaign it is very likely that the PCs have access to information (or people) that Manshoon dearly desires, and they should be able to trade that for their freedom and/or to form an alliance with Manshoon. This effectively gives them a mulligan on a failed heist at Kolat Towers.
THE FIRST HEIST
Let’s look at how this actually played out at my table.
One of the Zhentarim faction outposts is Yellowspire, a tower on the west side of Waterdeep used by Banite priests that contains one of the teleportation circles leading to Kolat Towers. The PCs learned of Yellowspire from their contacts in the Doom Raiders, a different sect of the Zhentarim who were opposed to Manshoon’s control.
Long story short, the PCs cleared out Yellowspire and the teleportation circle would become their access point for Kolat Towers. They also had a pass-amulet that they had obtained from raiding a different Zhentarim faction outpost.
At this point, the didn’t know much about what they would find on the other side of the teleportation circle. So they disguised themselves as Banite priests, using vestments and holy symbols gathered from Yellowspire, and went through.
Working their way down the tower from the teleportation hub, they encountered the statue of Duhlark Kolat in Area K10. They used the pass-amulet to get past the statue. (In reality, the statue simply floats into the air, issues a magic mouth challenge, and then sinks back down a minute later. But their experience was being challenged, holding up the amulet, and then watching the statue sink back down.)
Crossing to the other tower they provoked an attack from gargoyle guards and the sound of their fight attracted the attention of Yorn the Terror, a half-orc who had been trying to enjoy a little piece and quiet in the adjacent reading room with his signed copy of Volo’s Guide to Monsters.
Yorn saw their Banite robes and the pass-amulet they wore… and promptly ordered the gargoyles to stand down. “You have to show them the amulet,” he explained. “Otherwise they’re almost as big a terror as I am. Who are you here to see?”
The PCs thought quickly and offered up a basically random name that they knew to be associated with the Zhentarim: Agorn Fuoco.
I called for a Charisma (Deception) check at this point. It was a success.
“Agorn?” Yorn said. “I think you just missed him. He headed back through the portal to his quarters in the sanctum.”
“Through one of the other portals, then?” Pashar frowned.
“You came from Yellowspire?” Yorn said. “Yes. You’ll want the other teleportation circle. Do you have a signet ring?”
They did not. I could have called for a Charisma (Persuasion) test, but I decided to just let the result of the Charisma (deception) test ride forward.
“All right,” Yorn said, slipping a ring from his finger. “You can use mine. But make sure you have it back to me before dawn!”
“Pardon my ignorance,” Kora said. “But what happens if we don’t get it back before dawn?”
“I rip your arms off!” Yorn roared.
“Thank you! Much appreciated!”
Yorn gave them some brief instructions, telling them to ask Kaejva, on the other side of the teleportation circle, to give them directions to Agorn’s quarters. “And tell Agorn he owes me one.”
Yorn went back to his book, and the group rapidly backtracked to the teleportation hub.
At this point, of course, the PCs had everything they needed to smoothly access the Sanctum. And that’s exactly what they did.
THE SECOND HEIST
Ultimately, however, the first heist was not successful in retrieving the Eye: They lacked the key information of where it was located. Instead, they poked around for a bit, got a general sense of the Sanctum’s layout, and talked to a couple more Zhentarim who inadvertently told them where Manshoon’s quarters were located. Then they withdrew.
(In the process of withdrawing, they actually lured Agorn Fuoco back to Yellowspire and murdered him, too, but that has only a minimal impact on subsequent events.)
The first heist effectively became what we refer to as a “surveillance opportunity” in the heist scenario structure. They now knew a lot more information about their target, and they were going to use that to plan a second heist.
Their information, however, was incomplete. And, as a result, they drew an erroneous conclusion: They felt confident that Manshoon would be keeping the Eye on him. Thus, they believed that the target of the heist was Manshoon himself!
However, they also recognized that there was no way that they could go toe-to-toe with Manshoon, the Night King, Lord of Zhentil Keep, Master of the Black Network, and Scourge of Shadowdale.
Their solution was to go back to their contacts in the Doom Raiders — the other faction of Zhentarim in Waterdeep — and make a simple offer: “We know where Manshoon is. We have a way past his defenses. We’ll help you kill him, but you have to agree to let us take possession of a specific magical item in his possession.”
They didn’t even need to make a check for this: They’d already proven themselves to be reliable friends to the Doom Raiders, and given the circumstances there was no way that the Doom Raiders wouldn’t leap at the opportunity they were being given.
Independently I determined how long it would be before Zhentarim agents realized that Agorn Fuoco and the Yellowspire operation had been compromised. If that had happened, Manshoon’s Zhentarim would have cleared out Yellowspire, severed the teleportation circle, put Kolat Towers on high alert, and left the PCs high-and-dry. But the PCs moved quickly, and returned to Yellowspire before Manshoon’s Zhentarim realized anything was amiss.
They came with a Doom Raider strike force: Ziraj, Tashlyn, and Davil Starsong, all major leaders of the group, led a mixed force of four veterans and ten thugs. (The composition of the strike force was based on page 17 of Dragon Heist: “Tashlyn offers affordable mercenaries, either thugs costing 2 sp per day each or veterans costing 2 gp per day each.”) Yagra, the PCs’ primary contact with the Doom Raiders, also tagged along.
Their plan was simple: The PCs, once again dressed as Banite priests, would teleport through to the Sanctum. They knew from their previous visit that Kaejva, a wizard, stood watch over the arrival platform from an observation chamber off to one side. They would bluff their way past her, then circle around and kill her, before returning to usher the Doom Raider strike force through.
Here, however, their plan hit a snag: They flubbed their cover story with Kaejva and she, suspicious, prepared to cast a sending spell to summon Manshoon. One of the PCs were prepared for this however, and used misty step as a bonus action to pop into the observation chamber next to her, disrupt the casting of the spell, and throw the lever that would open the door for the other PCs.
Having killed Kaejva, they brought the Doom Raiders through.
From that point forward, their raid was basically clinical: Successful Stealth tests saw them systemically ambush and slaughter the Manshoonian zhents. (Several were sleeping. And the PCs knew where the others were likely to be congregating based on their prior surveillance.) It was overwhelming force applied to isolated, unprepared resistance.
The strike force did not, in fact, suffer a single injury before they burst into Manshoon’s private quarters.
THE DEATH OF MANSHOON
Manshoon was not so easily overwhelmed.
But what Manshoon had coming through the door at him was a platoon of twenty-four hostile warriors (including the PCs), and because there had been no warning he wasn’t prepared. He barely managed to get his robe of the archmagi wrapped around himself as the door burst open. He bought himself a few more seconds of time with a misty step followed by a wall of force, but he was pursued with misty step in kind and his concentration on the wall of force was broken. He managed to trap Davil Starsong in an imprisonment spell (the consequences of which are rather far-reaching and remain uncertain as of this writing), but then he was pretty much swallowed up by the Doom Raiders and PCs.
What’s the fall out of all this?
Well, the PCs have Manshoon’s Eye and are one step closer to restoring the Stone of Golorr. They also have his spellbook, robe of the archmagi, and staff of power. I made the decision to not limit the robe by alignment, so Pashar, the 5th level PC wizard, is glutted with power. The consequences of this, particularly with the PCs liberally spreading the word of their role in Manshoon’s death to the Harpers and Force Grey, are still to be seen.
If Davil Starsong had been around, he probably would have made a claim to these items. But with him imprisoned, the other members of the Doom Raiders who were present lacked the knowledge to push the issue. They’re fairly happy in any case: Not only did the PCs help them wipe out Manshoon, but with Manshoon dead they assisted in cleaning out the rest of Kolat Towers so that the Doom Raiders could move in. Even if/when Davil returns, he’ll probably rank “private interdimensional fortress” as a fair trade for the robe and staff.
OTHER APPROACHES
I don’t want to convey the sense that any of this is the One True Way™ for tackling Kolat Towers. Quite the opposite. The great thing about a well-designed heist scenario is that there ISN’T a One True Way™. The whole point is that the PCs are free to make their own plan and then we find out together whether or not that plan is going to work.
Honestly, even after the PCs made their alliance with the Doom Raiders I figured the most likely outcome of this plan would be that, at some point, the alarm would be raised and then Manshoon would arrive and lower the boom. It was exciting to see the plan come together and get pulled off in defiance of all expectations.
Other options that I’ve thought could work:
- Using disguise self spells to mimic the appearance of known Zhentarim agents and infiltrate the Towers.
- Actually pretend to join the Zhentarim in order to gain access to the Towers.
- Simply cut a deal with Manshoon.
What cool plan have you concocted? What have your players attempted? Did it work?
